171–180 of 338 posts
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How is profit any less 'productive' than any other expense?
Removing any other expense will be detrimental to the business, that is, make it work less well. Nothing will happen to the business if the owners don't get any dividends.
Good luck trying to make anything without the capital to buy the materials and hire the people to make it.
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That's an unfortunate name for a company...
Oh no, they very very very much lean in to it.
> Yes, that is our name. Shih-tah. It's a proud German name, host to a long line of audio engineers who slaved away in crumbling Teutonic fortresses as lightning lashed the dark lands outside, working to perfect the best amplification devices in the world...
> Or, well, no. Yep, Schiit is our name, and it's pronounced, well, like "hey man, that's some really good Schiit!" And now that we have your attention...
I'd not heard of them before, they look great.
As the owner of a pair of high-end Audeze, this article makes me wonder how much of the cost is marketing, as opposed to going towards "quality", for whatever definition of it. It's nicely built, sounds great, very neutral for production work, but.. $1000 great? Could I have gotten comparable performance for 1/10th the price? Is there an objective way of measuring "quality" in this space for premium products?
Yeah, absolutely. Equipment's not cheap, but there are folks out there doing including the guy who runs AudioScienceReview: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/a... https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/Hea...
I'm just happy niche communities using old school forum software still exist!
I've often wondered if there's something not quite good enough with open source forum software that Facebook is getting right. I suspect it's push notifications, but it's just a guess.
What I'd like as a consumer is the antidote to this. I saw something like this trying to get a replacement plumbing fitting at my parent's house a few years back. The local hardware store with the high-quality stuff had been closed down by the big-box stores. Perusing the possibilities at lowes and home depot showed plastic and fake chrome when I would have paid extra for high quality brass or even metal. It was just…
If you like Schiit and are willing to trade "Made in America" for "Best audio at any price", but for about the same price, you'd probably like Topping, too. https://www.tpdz.net
Together with the trusted Sennheiser HD600 headphone set, it is my standard advice when anybody asks.
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Were there any guides or tutorials you followed? 20 years ago or so, I knew someone who built their own speaker cabinets and I couldn’t believe DIY speakers could match companies that spent hundreds millions on audio engineering. I’ve heard enough anecdotes that I would be interested in learning more.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/ is the main online forum. There's a fair bit of discussion over at parts-express.com's forums as well. There's a variety of books out there. Sound Reproduction by Dr Toole is a very comprehensive reference to the big picture, but doesn't really get into speaker and crossover design specifically. There's other books you can find for that, but I'm unaware of the most recent good ones…
Of course this only applies to DIY. Though I wonder what's the cheapest commercial speaker one can get with an ADAU145x in a crossover-less design.
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Definitely agree. People who rail against this don't understand economics much further than my mom sold yard bird eggs for less than the corner store --corner stores are opportunist capitalists with no heart who take advantage of people. If they had to sustain a business I'm afraid they could not. Every wannabe post-capital economist should try to run a restaurant (profitably).
In your restaurant experiment, are we allowed to use robots to make and sell food to the customer? Or will they walk out?
It is good to know the failure modes of your AI.
Also the cost to develop, deploy, and maintain your robots.
BTW, most fast food does use robots as far as possible; these are highly automated processes. The robot might not look like you'd expect, but that aint a problem with the robot.
> The cost of building a consumer audio product is generally no more than 30% of retail. 30% COGS (cost of goods sold) is virtually a maximum for items sold at mainstream retailers. There’s nothing wrong with this. These are standard ratios, not some dirty secret. The cost of goods sold is only a fraction of the costs that go into getting products all the way into the customers’ hands and supporting them (customer su…
The big takeaway from understanding COGS is using that to understand fast moving and disposable goods and merchandise.
In the UK a recent (last decade) thing has been fast fashion, Primark and the like are leaders at this. It is possible to purchase a pair of straight leg jeans for GBP 12. Understanding COGS means you can quickly realise that the absolute maximum amount spent on materials and manufacturing is GBP 4.
An awareness of COGS reveals to buyers unethical manufacturing, low quality, and essentially planet damaging goods and merchandise.
On a more individual level, i.e. the Beats headphone example in the article, it can also reveal when you're being ripped off. Where what you're buying isn't the goods as much as it is the sticker on the side and the status.
COGS may not be a secret to most people on HN, but they're an unknown part of the magic of how global commerce works to the majority of people.
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https://www.diyaudio.com/community/ is the main online forum. There's a fair bit of discussion over at parts-express.com's forums as well. There's a variety of books out there. Sound Reproduction by Dr Toole is a very comprehensive reference to the big picture, but doesn't really get into speaker and crossover design specifically. There's other books you can find for that, but I'm unaware of the most recent good ones…
I honestly believe crossover design is overrated these days (for DIY). It was a necessity in the past, but today we have cheap amps and great DSPs. "The age of the active speaker" I'd call it. The smallest ADAU145x can do the crossover (and corrections) for a 2-way speaker. If necessary even as a FIR. Products I have are the freeDSP-aurora (8 channel DSP, 300€) and a Beocreate (4 channel DSP+amp, 170€). Both use the…
But also what I was getting at with mentioning the common room correction systems is these days, you can do something like take a textbook Linkwitz Riley 4th order crossover, do the little bit that's necessary to match levels, and then just call it good and let the receiver's DSP handle the large scale FR response. That advice might annoy some more knowledgable people, but the blunt truth is it'll work and done with reasonable care you'll have a truly impressive system for the price.
I don't know pro gear that much but my understanding is there's a bunch of vendors now that package DSP + ClassD amps in a way the speaker companies can white label as their own. Kinda like half the AV receivers on the market are ultimately mildly tweaked Audyssey designs.